Vintage Soul (24 page)

Windham didn't have to go on.
 
In such an instance, there would be no time to protect one's self, or, even if you did find a way to do so, no way to prevent whatever other action the curse might entail.
 
It wasn't a chance Donovan wanted to take.

“Just touch that to the dust,”
Windham
repeated.
 
“You'll know what to do next.”

Donovan nodded.
 
He tucked the amulet away in an inside pocket, and stood, draining his glass and wishing suddenly he had time for more than one.
 
A bottle, maybe.

He pulled out his wallet and laid a bill on the table.
 
In that same motion, he deposited an envelope in
Windham
's lap.
 
Again, no one was watching, and if they had been watching, they would have expected to see money change hands.
 
Donovan had been known to use collectors in the past, and everyone was familiar with
Windham
.
 
Still, Donovan erred on the side of caution.
 
He turned and exited the bar without another word.
 
He reached the street and headed east.
 
The Shady Grove cemetery was outside of town at the halfway point between San Valencez and Lavender,
California
.
 
It was several miles, and he had no time to make it on foot, but there were other ways.
 

He checked the street for prying eyes, found it vacant, and stopped in front of a dark stairway leading down from street level toward a brick wall.
 
There was no apparent reason for this stairway, but he knew it well.
 
He turned three times, took three steps down, climbed back two, and then descended.
 
At the wall he stopped, and a door shimmered into view.
 
He etched a symbol into the dust clotted on the glass pane that centered this door, and it opened with a mechanical sound reminiscent of large tumblers sliding into place – very large.
 
The sound echoed.
 
Donovan stepped through the doorway, and was gone.
 
Where he'd passed, the brick wall stood solid, and grimy.

~ * ~

 
Johndrow listened as the phone rang for the tenth time, and then slowly lowered the receiver back into its cradle.
 
It was his third attempt in as many minutes to reach DeChance.
 
He wanted an update on Vanessa's abduction, and he wanted to warn DeChance about Vein.
 
Ever since the hotheaded young one had left, Johndrow had grown more and more certain he'd made a mistake in allowing it.
 
He wanted to believe that all parties involved would keep Vanessa's welfare in the forefront of their minds, but it was growing harder to believe it as true.
 
He also wanted to feel as if he was a part of it all, as if he were doing more than sitting back on his heels and waiting while others fought his fight.

He knew Vein hadn't been swayed by their talk, and in reality, he was glad the young ones had gone on the hunt; just sorry they'd gone alone.
 
Maybe they were right.
 
Maybe he was just getting old and complacent, and they didn't need outside assistance to settle a matter like this.
 
The blood bond was strong enough that Vein could probably track it to its source, and they were not without resources of their own, albeit darker and less magical in most cases than what DeChance offered.

He thought about calling Joel, but decided against it.
 
There was nothing either of them could do, and if he got started talking about Vanessa he might never stop.
 
He needed to keep his head clear, and he needed to be ready to act if the need arose.
 
Until then, he needed to be able to do something much more difficult.
 
He needed to wait.

A knock sounded lightly on his door.

“Enter,” he called out.

 
A thin young man stepped through the door.
 
He kept his eyes downcast, but his voice was firm.

“There is a message for you, sir,” he said.

“Send them in,” Johndrow said.

“There is no messenger,” the young man replied.
 
“Only this.”

He held out a dark bundle, and Johndrow, frowning, nodded toward his desk.

“Open it on there,” he said.

The young man complied, and they both stared.
 
What hope Johndrow had faded, and he drew in his breath so sharply it sounded like a hiss.

On his desk, wrapped in a long, dark jacket, were five pairs of very dark sunglasses.
 
Johndrow stepped forward, reached out, and then pulled his hand back.
 
He didn't need to touch them; he knew who had worn them last.

“Who brought these?” he asked sharply.

“It wasn't a man, or a woman,” the boy replied.
 
“The bundle was dropped from the eaves by a bird.
 
A raven, I believe.
 
When we retrieved it, it was tied with a red ribbon, and this note was attached.”

He held out a white note-card sized piece of paper, and Johndrow took it, flipping it over so that he could read the single word lettered across its back.

“Johndrow.”
 

“There was nothing more?” he asked.

The young one shook his head.
 
“Nothing, sir.
 
What shall we do?”

“There is nothing we
can
do,” Johndrow said.
 
He swore under his breath and crushed the card in his hand.
 
“Nothing but wait.”

The young man's eyes glittered, but he held his silence, and a moment later he turned on his heel and left the room.
 
Johndrow watched his retreating back for a moment, then glanced down at the sunglasses and shuddered.

“Where are you, DeChance?” he asked the night.
 
“Where in hell have you gone?”

FIFTEEN

Mist swirled about the base of the tall, wrought iron gates of the
Shady
Grove
Cemetery
.
 
Donovan approached from the rear, not out of any fear of being seen, but because the particular doorway he'd chosen to use opened into an abandoned barn nearby.
 
In any case, if he'd come in through the front gates he'd have needed to make his way to the rear of the graveyard eventually – that was where the priest was buried.
 
All of the oldest graves were in a lightly wooded, semi-overgrown section of Shady Grove that few visited.
 
Most of the graves were so old the markers had begun to crumble, or had fallen.
 
Most of the families of the deceased were long gone themselves, or had married and moved on beyond any blood ties that might have bound them to their history.
 
The world moved on, but Shady Grove remained.

A trail led from the barn up to a point where it joined with the old back road into the cemetery, and it was at this crossroad Donovan stopped to consider his options.
 
The gates were tall, stretching nearly twenty feet into the air.
 
The fence wound around to either side and was formed of iron spikes similar to those on the gates, though a bit shorter – perhaps ten feet.
 
They were joined near their base, and again near their top, by a poured concrete frame.
 
It was a solid, imposing wall.
 
Nothing human could slip through those bars, and it would take a superhuman effort to climb either wall or gate – that and the luck not to slip at the wrong moment and be impaled on one of the spikes.

Donovan thought back to a time not too far in the past when just such a thing had happened, then dismissed it from his mind.
 
He had to keep his mind on the task at hand.
 
The graveyard, and its past, was interesting, but not relevant, and he had plenty of work ahead of him before he'd have leisure to dwell on either.

He watched the shadows beyond the gate for a few moments, but nothing stirred.
 
He knew there were two guards on duty at all times.
 
Earlier disturbances had prompted the city of
San Valencez
, and the neighboring town of
Lavender
, to combine funding for twenty-four hour surveillance on the cemetery.
 
Kids had used it in the past for late-night gatherings, but that wasn't the worst of it.
 
The graveyard had a history of murder, dark ritual, and unexplained mystery that made daylight citizens uneasy.
 
The result was a constant patrol, and though the guards themselves had quickly begun to grow lax as day after day passed with nothing more interesting than leaves blowing across the trail and an occasional teenager turned away at the gates, the San Valencez and Lavender Police Departments still cruised by regularly, flashing spotlights between the gravestones and watching.

The locked gate didn't trouble Donovan.
 
He stepped up quickly, gripped the heavy padlock in one hand and pressed a small circular charm to the back.
 
The lock opened with a soft pop, and the chains snaked down to pool at the base of the gate.
 
Donovan opened one half very slightly, cringing at the loud creak, and slipped inside.
  
Once inside, he wrapped the chain back around the gate, slid the hook of the padlock through the links on both sides, but left it open.
 
A casual glance would not show that it had been tampered with, and on his way out he didn't want to be bothered with stopping to open it again.
 
He didn't expect to be in any more of a hurry when he left, but you never knew.

When he was clear of the gate, he stepped immediately into the shadows.
 
He didn't believe the guard would actually patrol this far back so late at night, even though it was part of the job.
 
Still, if anyone had been close the sound of the gate creaking, and the clanking of the chains would have been unmistakable.
 
No one came, and Donovan set to work.

He brought out the charm that
Windham
had given him and let it dangle from its chain.
 
He knew that if it was created to react on contact with the bone marrow dust he sought, that he could magnify that reaction and use it to track the proper grave.
 
He'd narrowed it to an area by quick research, but records from that far back were sketchy at best, and not too reliable.
 
The ground that had comprised the cemetery had been a much smaller plot when Father Vargas had served the congregation at the Cathedral of San Marcos, and the maps of the area and of the grave plots were not set in any perspective that made sense in the modern layout.

It didn't matter.
 
There was only one older area of the graveyard, and of that section a very small portion was reserved for the use of The Church.
 
Using the charm like a dowsing rod, Donovan carefully crept between trees and around low-slung, ornate monuments.
 
He moved steadily toward the center of the older section, and before long he knew he was on the trail.
 
The pendant hung at a forty-five degree angle, defying gravity, and led him onward.

Windham had been right on at least one count.
  
If there were other suitable graves, the pendant would not have reacted so strongly and the search might have taken much longer.
 
It would have shifted from side to side, catching the essence of other possible targets; it did not.
 
The pull of Vargas' grave was strong and steady.

As he proceeded, he kept a close eye out for any glimmer of approaching light.
 
He didn't want to be disturbed as he strolled through the garden of the dead, but he also didn't want to expend any energy that might attract less-earthly attention before it was absolutely necessary.
 
The walls between worlds in Shady Grove were exceptionally thin; he sensed motion just out of the periphery of his sight, but ignored it.
 

It took nearly twenty minutes, but at last he came to a grave marked by a squat, heavy cross.
 
The cross was ornate; there were some chips missing from the edges, and green mold grew up one side of it and dangled from beneath the arm, but for all of that it was impressive.
 
The ground near the grave was permeated with energy that pulsed with Donovan's heartbeat.
 
The pendant pulled against the thong holding it out away from his skin, as if it wanted to fly to the stone and become a part of the design.
 
He quietly removed the enhancement he'd added to the charm's attractive qualities, and tucked it away.

Donovan didn't hurry.
 
There were mistakes to be avoided, and he intended to steer clear of them all.
 
He walked around the grave in a circle, and began to clear his mind.
 
He measured his steps carefully, and when he finished the first circuit, he immediately began another, carefully walking the same line, placing his feet one in front of the other precisely as he had the first time around.
 
As he continued this, he slowly picked up speed.
 
He drew a small pouch from his pocket.
 
Being certain not to violate the precision of his steps, he opened the pouch.
 
He dangled his hand before him at an angle and very carefully sprinkled the powder on the ground.
  
Where he passed, a tin wall of mist rose.
 
He completed the circuit, stepped within the circle, and closed the pouch.